The Perfect Storm

The owner had even offered to pay Bobby’s plane ticket. Bobby declined. “He said he was really in love with this chick,” says Ricky. “So I said, ‘Alright, I love you, bro,’ and he said, ‘I love you too.’ And that was the last thing we said to each other.”

A month later Ricky got the news. He was two days out of Hawaii with all his gear in the water, and he called up the High Seas operator to make contact by satellite phone with the boat’s owner, who was fishing off Samoa. The operator told Ricky there was “stand-by traffic” for him—a call waiting to be patched through—and then she connected Ricky to his boss. The boss said that Bob Brown had been leaving messages on his assistant’s answering machine in California. Uh-oh, Ricky thought, stand-by traffic, a message from Bob Brown… something’s happened to Bobby.

Sure enough, the stand-by call was from his sister, Mary Anne. Ricky, I love you, she started off, and then she said that Bobby’s boat was missing. “I just figured they were gone,” says Ricky. “So I went outside and told my crew, I said, ‘My brother’s boat is missing and I think we’re just gonna haul the line and go in.’ I hauled with tears in my eyes, I was bullshit with God for something like that happening. We got in and got drunk and then I just flew home.”

At the memorial service Ricky saw people he hadn’t seen in twenty years—friends from grade school, old fishing buddies, mothers from the neighborhood. He stayed in Gloucester a couple of weeks and then went right back out to Hawaii, knocking two windows out of the wheelhouse during a storm on the first trip out. All he could think about was how his mother would feel if she lost two sons instead of just one, and he decided to cut down on his risks. He would go to the Grand Banks no later than October, and even October would be subject to Ethel’s approval. “You’ll have a choice in the matter,” he told her. Still, risk was a difficult thing to avoid, and he even found himself seeking it from time to time. After a few more years in Hawaii he moved back to Gloucester with his wife and started fishing with a man whose father had been lost at sea. The two of them, he said, did crazy things on the boat, fishing late in the season through really severe weather.

“We felt untouchable,” was how he explained it. “We felt like there was no way that God could do that to the same families twice.”

By the time I talked with Ricky, the book had—against all expectations—become a bestseller, and I was spending a lot of time in Gloucester, staying at the Crow’s Nest, showing media people around a town. It was an odd feeling: I remembered Gloucester as a grey, rocky town where I supported myself doing treework and wondering, at age thirty, exactly where my life was going. Now here I was, giving television interviews from the Nest while the regulars tried to ignore the lights and keep drinking their beer. When people said I’d put Gloucester on the map, I replied that it was more like Gloucester had put me on the map. There were any number of people— Chris, Ethel, local fishermen—without whom I could not have written this book. Had they not lived the lives they did, and agreed to talk with me about them, the book would not exist. In that sense, I’m indebted to them; in that sense, the book is as much their work as mine. Writers often don’t know much about the world they’re trying to describe, but they don’t necessarily need to. They just need to ask a lot of questions. And then they need to step back and let the story speak for itself.

NEW YORK CITY

January 11, 1998

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ONE of the most difficult tasks in writing this book was to get to know—to whatever extent this is possible—the men who died at sea in the Halloween Gale. That required contacting their friends and family and reopening wounds that had only begun to heal. With that in mind, I would like to thank the Shatford family, Chris Cotter, Tammy Cabral, Debra Murphy, Mildred Murphy, Jodi Tyne, Chris Hansen, and Marianne Smith for their willingness to talk about such a painful episode in their lives.

The survivors of the storm also had difficult stories to tell, and I am indebted to Judith Reeves, Karen Stimpson, John Spillane, and Dave Ruvola for talking about their experiences so openly. I would also like to thank all the people who answered my questions about fishing, bought me beers at the Crow’s Nest, got me onto fishing boats, and generally taught me about the sea. They are—in no particular order—Linda Greenlaw, Albert Johnston, Charlie Reed, Tommy Barrie, Alex Bueno, John Davis, Chris Rooney, “Hard” Millard, Mike Seccareccia, Sasquatch, Tony Jackett, and Charlie Johnson. In addition, Bob Brown was kind enough to talk to me despite the obviously delicate issues surrounding the loss of his boat.

This material first appeared as an article in Outside magazine, and I must thank the editors there for their help. Also, Howie Sanders and Richard Green in Los Angeles.

Finally, I must thank my friends and family for reading draft after draft of this manuscript, as well as my editor, Starling Lawrence, his assistant, Patricia Chui, and my agent, Stuart Krichevsky.

The Perfect Storm Foundation, established by Sebastian Junger and friends, provides educational opportunities to children of Gloucester fishermen and other young people. To contribute, send your tax-deductible donation to:

The Perfect Storm Foundation

Post Office Box 1941 Gloucester, MA 01931-1941

http://www.perfectstorm.org

About the Author

SEBASTIAN JUNGER is a freelance journalist who writes for numerous magazines, including Outside, American Heritage, Men’s Journal, and the New York Times Magazine. He has lived most of his life on the Massachusetts coast and now resides in New York City.

PHOTOGRAPHS

^{Cape Ann lighthouse on a tranquil day.}

^{A wave crashing onto Gloucester’s Stacy Boulevard during the storm of October, 1991.}

^{Crow’s Nest and Rose Marine as seen from the State Fish Pier.}

^{Ethel Shatford working at the Crow’s Nest.}

^{Rose Marine as seen from Bobby Shatford’s room at the Crow’s Nest.}

^{The ill-fated Andrea Gail (with the Crows Nest in the background).}

^{The Andrea Gail’s sister ship, the Hannah Boden,}